Conventionally, screen printing process and roller printing process have been applied as the method for printing cloths. However, these processes require screens and chased rolls according to the desired printing patterns. Therefore, they showed difficulties in both workability and economics when each small lots of many grades was required to be printed.
Thus, the ink jet printing process has been investigated and various patent applications have been submitted including Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 6347 of 1986, No.300377 of 1990 and No.45774 of 1991.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No.6347 of 1986 describes that a fine pattern of deep color can be attained by performing dot dyeing so that a) the average of the major axis and the minor axis of the dot is 100 to 500 .mu.m, b) the dot density is not higher than 16 dots/mm and c) the dots penetrate through the front surface to the back surface and part of the color points can be seen on the back surface of the cloth. However, by such a dyeing method, no deeper color can be attained than that attained by screen printing and no fine line of 0.3 mm or less can be attained of printed pattern. It was also difficult to give an exact stripe pattern and a natural gradation pattern.
The object of the present invention is to provide a printed cloth fine line of 0.3 mm or less, an exact stripe pattern, a natural gradation pattern or the like is clearly dyed in a deep color, which could not be attained by conventional methods.